If anyone has children aged 7 to 12, you can enrol in your local after hours music programme.

These are held at local schools after school on weekdays or weekend. Tuition is in group classes, usually the more advanced classes have only a small number of students.

The teacher’s salaries are paid for by the Ministry of Education, and anyone can enrol. Costs and instruments available vary depending on the school, and usually instruments are available to hire at very reasonable rates.

For example, our local school is Kedgley Intermediate, they offer singing, recorder, ukulele, keyboard, guitar, violin, clarinet, saxophone, flute, drums. Costs are $50 per child, and $30 admin fee per family – for the year.

To find your local out of hours music programme school, call your local Ministry of Education office.

Manawatu: Saturday School of Music

Learning Music aged 13+

What do you do when your children are secondary school age, and they would love to learn music?

When we moved back to NZ from Australia, our children began to learn music at our local Intermediate school, but our daughter was too old 🙁

For a year she taught herself violin at home, after sitting in her sister’s music class (with the permission of the teacher).  Before long, she was good enough to join the local youth orchestra junior section, so that gave us access to a subsidised instrument hire – but what about lessons?

I rang our local secondary school, and enquired about having her learn from their itinerant violin teacher.  They were happy for her to learn for a cost of $20 a term, which was great, but after a couple of years that opportunity was gone.  By now she was an experienced orchestral musician, and we asked at another school – and they were also willing for both of our girls to learn. They also play in the school orchestra, which has an excellent conductor.

Other suggestions for places to learn music:

*Join Auckland Library and use their extensive library of music teaching books for DIY lessons. They also have a huge collection of sheet music in the basement.
*Youtube for music lessons for beginners
*Local folk music clubs.  We learn bagpipes & drums at our local band.  Ask at your local Citizen’s Advice Bureau or Google.
*Join a local children’s choir
*Join your local Youth Orchestra or High School Orchestra
*Ask at your local music shop about music groups or teachers near you
*Start up a music group in your homeschool group. CreativeNZ and Local council often has funding for teachers & venues for music projects such as putting on a concert or cultural celebration for the community.
*Get together with your friends, and pay for a teacher to teach a group of children and spread the cost.
*Private music lessons are currently about $25 for half an hour in Auckland for a good teacher.  Try the Yellow Pages, or Google NZ registered music teachers, Suzuki School of Music, ABRSM or Trinity for teachers who will coach towards theory or performance exams.
*Ask at your local church for a music or singing teacher
*Local Adult Education classes
*NZ Correspondence school for music theory for 16+ years

Jillian Wilson, Otahuhu, Auckland